Lying for a god

The Rev. Lino Otero is a man of faith who also has a deep
interest in science. This week, his church opens an exhibit on
a religious mystery that theologians, scientists and
historians have debated for centuries: the Shroud of Turin.

Actually, only a few
diehard shroud worshippers find anything mysterious about this
medieval forgery anymore. Anyone who has a deep interest in and
a deep respect for science accepts the
verdict reached by three independent sources
—Oxford University, the University of Arizona, and the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology —
that the cloth originated around 1350.

The current exhibit
on display at Otero's church in Sacramento, California, includes
a replica of the shroud, a crown of thorns, and copies of whips
allegedly used to scourge Jesus of Nazareth at his crucifixion.
The exhibit also includes two holograms showing a
three-dimensional image of a crucified man and a bronze
life-size statue, which, according to Garza, shows how the body of the man in
the shroud suffered. Since the shroud is a painting, there was
nobody who suffered any kind of agony before being buried in it.
Had Garza checked the proper sources, she
would know this.

Otero claims that
"the exhibit is comprehensive," which is a lie unless
'comprehensive' means something other than comprehensive in
church Latin. It is true that
the exhibit includes panels explaining the scientific tests
performed on it. But the display does not tell the whole truth.
Garza writes that "in 1998, radiocarbon tests indicated the
fabric dates to between A.D. 1260 and A.D. 1390. But Otero said
other scientists have since shown that the sample used had been
added later and was not part of the original cloth." It may
be true that Otero said that, but what he said is not true. These scientists haven't "shown" anything. They've
alleged.

Raymond Rogers,
a retired chemist from Los
Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, claims that the part
of the cloth tested and dated at around 1350 was not part of the
original shroud. According to Rogers, the labs that dated the
cloth to the 14th century tested a patch made to repair damage
done by fire. How does he know this, since the patch was
destroyed in the testing? According to shroud investigator
Joe Nickell, Rogers "relied on two little threads allegedly
left over from the sampling" and the word of "pro-authenticity
researchers who guessed that the carbon-14 sample came from a
'rewoven area' of repair." According to Nickell, P. E. Damon's
1989 article published in Nature claims that "textile
experts specifically made efforts to select a site for taking
the radiocarbon sample that was away from patches and seams."
Maybe that should be repeated for Otero and Garza: the
textile experts who selected the sample piece for radiocarbon
dating selected a site away from patches and seams.

Says
Nickell,

Rogers compared the threads
with some small samples from elsewhere on the Shroud, claiming
to find differences between the two sets of threads that
“prove” the radiocarbon sample “was not part of the original
cloth” of the Turin shroud.

The reported differences
include the presence—allegedly only on the “radiocarbon
sample”—of cotton fibers and a coating of madder root dye in a
binding medium that his tests “suggest” is gum
Arabic....However, Rogers’ assertions to the contrary, both
the cotton and the madder have been found elsewhere on the
shroud. Both were specifically reported by famed microanalyst
Walter McCrone.

Dr. Rogers estimates
the actual date of the shroud to be between about 1,000 BCE. and
1700 CE. Still, all the evidence points toward the medieval
forgery hypothesis. As Nickell notes, "no examples of its
complex herringbone weave are known from the time of Jesus when,
in any case, burial cloths tended to be of plain weave" (1998:
35; Milstein 2009). "In addition, Jewish burial practice utilized—and the
Gospel of John specifically describes for Jesus—multiple burial
wrappings with a separate cloth over the face."*

Other evidence of medieval
fakery includes the shroud’s lack of historical record prior
to the mid-fourteenth century—when a bishop reported the
artist’s confession—as well as serious anatomical problems,
the lack of wraparound distortions, the resemblance of the
figure to medieval depictions of Jesus, and suspiciously
bright red and picture-like “blood” stains which failed a
battery of sophisticated tests by forensic serologists, among
many other indicators. (Nickell
2005).

Of
course, the cloth might be 3,000 or 2,000 years old, as Rogers
speculates, but the image on the cloth could date from a much
later period. No matter what date is correct for either the
cloth or the image, the date cannot prove to any degree of
reasonable probability that the cloth is the shroud Jesus was
wrapped in and that the image is somehow miraculous. To believe
that will always be a matter of faith, not scientific proof.

According to Garza,
Otero told her "I love being challenged by agnostics. We believe
our faith does not contradict reason. We should have an open
mind in order to find truth. Our search for truth is guided by
our faith." Not true, Otero. Your faith has blinded you to the
truth. Reason would have you admit the shroud is one of many
medieval forgeries that were part of the relic trade in those
times. Your faith hinges on two threads alleged to be proof that
the scientists who took extraordinary care to extract a
representative sample from the shroud for testing were wrong and
the believer's speculations are true.

Garza doesn't
question anything Otero says and parrots his faith for her
readers. Her bias shows clearly in the third paragraph of her
article where she writes:

Few religious relics are as
disputed as the 14-foot-long cloth. Many Christians believe it
was used to bury Jesus and bears his image. Skeptics say it is
a fraud and point to scientific tests – such as radiocarbon
dating done in 1998 – as evidence.

Wow! That's giving
both sides of the story. On the one side you have many
Christians who believe it's the burial shroud of Jesus and on
the other side you have those silly skeptics who accept
scientific tests as evidence. How retro of them to put their
faith in science!

It seems
fitting that the shroud hoax exhibit should be on display at the
church of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Sacramento, which is named
after the church in Mexico City where another hoax is on display
for the faithful to venerate.

Legend
has it that Juan Diego, an indigenous ascetic mystic who had
converted to Christianity, frequently walked barefoot the 14
miles from his village to church in Tenochtitlan (Mexico City).
It was on these walks that he allegedly had several visions of
the Virgin Mary. He allegedly brought to the bishop his cloak on
which an image of the Virgin had been painted (Our Lady of
Guadalupe, shown above, is the centerpiece of the Basilica of
the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City). Legend has it that the
image was accompanied by roses, which were out of season and
which skeptics had asked Juan to have the Virgin produce as
proof of his claim that she had appeared to him several times.
Many believe that the painting is of heavenly origin. Skeptics,
weird folks that they are, considered all the evidence and
concluded that the painting was done by a human artist and passed off as being of
miraculous origin in order to win more converts to Christianity.

In
1556, a formal investigation found that the image was painted by
an Aztec artist, "Marcos" [Cipac de Aquino].*
Examinations of the image have found good evidence that the
image was painted on the cloth. For example:

...infrared photographs show
that the hands have been modified, and close-up photography
shows that pigment has been applied to the highlight areas of
the face sufficiently heavily so as to obscure the texture of
the cloth. There is also obvious cracking and flaking of paint
all along a vertical seam, and the infrared photos reveal in
the robe's fold what appear to be sketch lines, suggesting
that an artist roughed out the figure before painting it.
Portrait artist Glenn Taylor has pointed out that the part in
the Virgin's hair is off-center; that her eyes, including the
irises, have outlines, as they often do in paintings, but not
in nature, and that these outlines appear to have been done
with a brush; and that much other evidence suggests the
picture was probably copied by an inexpert artist from an
expertly done original. (Nickell
2002)

In
2002, a report on a secret study of the Image of Guadalupe was
published. José Sol Rosales, an art restoration expert, found
that the cloth "appeared to be a mixture of linen and hemp or
cactus fiber" that had been primed with calcium sulfate. The
paint used to produce the image consisted of the rather earthly
combination of pigment, water, and a binding medium (Nickell
2002).

The
improbability of the story of Juan Diego (some
doubt he even existed), his visions, and the miraculous
painting have not deterred the faithful from belief. In fact,
only a deep
religious faith could account for the continued popularity
of the shroud of Turin and the many sightings of the Virgin Mary,
especially in the role of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The skeptic understands the
desire
to have a powerful ally in heaven, one who will protect and
guide, console, and love you no matter what troubles you have
here on Earth. The skeptic understands the power of relics to
evoke strong emotions through
magical thinking. The skeptic also understands how easy it is to
find
confirmation for almost any belief if one is very
selective in
one's thinking and perception. We understand how easy it is
to see things
that others do not see. Having visions also makes one feel
special. Thus, it is not difficult to understand how many people
see the virgin Mary or Jesus in the clouds, in a tortilla, in a dish of
spaghetti, in patterns of light, or in the bark of a tree.

What we
won't tolerate, though, is being lied to by people who claim to
be deeply interested in science but who will accept scientific
evidence only if it is in accord with their prior beliefs.

Material evidence 'debunks myth' of Turin Shroud Well,
maybe. It all depends on whether it is reasonable to assume that
a shroud dated to the 1st century CE has a weave that would have
been typical around the time that Jesus was wrapped and that
Jesus was wrapped in a typical shroud. Anyway, the myth was
adequately debunked when the shroud was carbon dated to the
Middle Ages.

Mystery reopened? No.
Bizarrely, the less-noticed Oxford University press release on
the same topic was entitled “International radiocarbon dating
experts confirm the Turin Shroud is a medieval fake” and, though
including Professor Ramsey's very proper willingness to conduct
further research, added that “the researchers conclude the
original radiocarbon date of 14th century is correct, based on
current evidence, but they have yet to test whether there is
anything in the specific storage conditions of the shroud which
might affect this conclusion”.*